191. Stations of the Cross

191.

Stations of the Cross

At a very old church, we join the daily guided tour of the “real” Stations of the Cross”.

It is a fantasy parade: men wearing the black monk’s robes of the middle ages mingle with perhaps two hundred tourists. A medieval monk, wearing up-to-date eye glasses, reads what I suppose are the approved words in Latin through a bull-horn loud speaker while a sound engineer captures the rite with his complicated equipment.

You can’t believe the range of cameras being snapped!

Now some of the black robes are chanting as through the narrow streets we pour. Shopkeepers leer from their open doorways at the liberated young tourist girls wearing skimpy tops and skin-tight jeans. We pause at plaques set into walls marking each of the twelve certified locations where the God-man did His thing.

It’s a Fellini film! Not very many of the faces in the mob are wholesome to look at; old people visiting Spiritual Las Vegas, kids along for the ride—and me? Well, I’m here too aren’t I?

The last four “stations” are in the same building—a big Crusader’s church. The “sepulcher” is thirty feet from ground zero, “Golgotha”, where they did Him in. This preposterous layout for a medieval Disneyland is the final assault on credibility.

But the black robe’s chanting is beautiful and in the soft gloom, the glitter of silver, marble and camera lenses reaches for a psychedelic high.

Here’s the marble box representing “the tomb”. Taking my turn, I crawl through a short tunnel and emerge into a sudden blaze of precious metal by candlelight. Here it is! In the center of the tiny room guarded by a holy bouncer in black: The Money Box! What did I think it would be? What sort of revelation did I expect? Money. That’s what it’s all about. So I drop in a handful of coins. 

Wouldn’t you?

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